Hello Florida!

 

We arrived to our new home in southeast Florida! Some statistics from our trip cross-country:

• Total miles driven: 6,134
• Total time spent in the car: 126 hours, 21 minutes, and 25 seconds
• Highest elevation: 12,005 feet in the Rocky Mountains
• Lowest elevation: below sea level in the Low Country of Charleston, SC

As we would drive away from an area, we independently rated each place - here are the results:

	Suzanne	Brad
Sun Valley	7	7
Springdale/Zion	9	9
Kanab/Bryce	8	7.5
Monument Valley	5	7.5
Mesa Verde	7	8
Black Canyon of the Gunnison	8	6
Rocky Mountains	10	9
Hot Springs/Little Rock	3	5.5
Charleston, SC	7	8

Along the way we had some great food and some not so great food - however we did get sick of hotel breakfasts pretty quickly. Overall we both think it was a great trip with some unexpected fun times and a bit of unplanned adventures. Now it's time to sleep in our own bed......ahhhhhh!😊

Charleston, South Carolina

We spent a few day exploring the Charleston area and learned a few things along the way, such as:

• low country = below sea level
• high country =  above sea level, even if it's only one foot above sea level! 😁

We also learned that the streets in the low country often flood when there is an especially high tide. Huh - that sounds like that would be fairly often - can't imagine how bad it is during a major rainstorm!

Day 1 - We went to the old historic area and meandered Market Street (enjoyed The Charleston Market), walked to Battery Point, and continued along King street and a bunch of streets in the area. We enjoyed looking at the large homes along the water, had a mediocre lunch, and pretty much popped into different stores along the way to enjoy their AC as it was a hot and humid day!

Day 2 - We first walked along Pickett Bridge Recreation area....

 

 

 We could see Charleston, and where we walked on Day 1, across the water....

And the huge (and beautiful) bridge that we kept having to cross.....

We then drove to the Shem Creek Marina and enjoyed a long walk along the boardwalk.....

 

 

In the afternoon, we drove to the Charleston Tea Garden to check out the US's only working tea farm. Here we learned that green and black tea come from the same plant, but the difference is that the leaves are not oxidized to make green tea, whereas they are oxidized for about 15 minutes to make oolong tea and 45 minutes for black tea. (Here's an interesting article.)

This is the sole machine that clips the leaves from the plants every few weeks. The tea plants are in the back. It takes about 22 hours from start to finish - from clipping to tea. 

In the vein of taking photos of silly things along the way (see Traveling East post), here is the world's largest iced tea:

And we've no idea what a frog has to do with tea, but here ya go.......

Day 3 - We headed to Sullivan's Island and walked the beach for about 4 - 5 miles. The water was warm and the beach very nice. 

There was a huge cargo ship that turned to go up Charleston Harbor, but from our perspective, it look like she was going to beach herself!

 

We then drove around a bit and enjoyed a good lunch.

And that's Charleston! 😀

Arkansas

We decided to spend a few days in Hot Springs with plans to travel to Little Rock one day - truth be told, we're a bit disappointed in both areas. 

Day 1 - Hot Springs

We checked out Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs National Park - meh. We thought it would be a quaint area with walking paths and cute shops - really it was more of a run down area. We did enjoy the National Park's bathhouse museum. We also thought we would hike here, but the trails are basically little ones (less than a mile) in forests with no views - not our favorite type of hikes.

 

Day 2 - Little Rock

We walked the Riverfront Park area - it was 11am and there was no one out and about - where are all the people that work downtown? We assume that it was dead due to people working from home due to COVID. It is another run-down area, although not as bad as Portland, graffiti-wise and transient-wise. 

We did check out the Esse Purse Museum - interesting, but not quite worth the $10/per person admission price.  Next door was the #1 rate Little Rock restaurant - The Root Cafe - slow service, but very good food! 

Day 3 - Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs

We thought it would be fun to rent a boat and tool around Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs today, but all of the marinas were fully booked in terms of boat rentals. Suzanne discovered boatsetter.com - basically an Airbnb for boat owners. A few emails later, we were enjoying a few hours on the lake with Suzanne as captain.

 

This was probably the second-most choppy waters we have boated in, plus this was a (very hot) Saturday and very busy on the water - so we didn't enjoy the boating as much as we usually do. We brought the boat back a bit early, and with permission from the boat owners, we enjoyed their backyard while we cooled-off floating in the lake. 

 

 

This is one of the few times that Brad took pictures. (Suzanne enjoys the water much more than Brad.)

 

So now we are on the hunt for friends with a boat and a house on the lake. 😀

 

Traveling East

We spent a couple days working our way east, first stopping in Wilson, Kansas at the Midland Railroad Hotel. We can't seem to remember why we wanted to stop here, except for maybe the fact that it was the "right" amount of time to drive for one day. The hotel was super cute, as it was, at one time, a true railroad hotel. (Side note - although neither of us have seen the movie, apparently Paper Moon was partially filmed here.) The town, sadly, is dying - here's pretty much the town - the hotel is the large building on the right.

There is a large Czech population in town, thus we were able to have kolaches for breakfast and see the World's Largest Hand Painted Czech Egg!

We saw a few more roadside attractions along the way as we are making our way east:

A big dish.....

 

An 18-wheeler on its nose...........

Big dog statues...........

And Mr. Peanut!

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado ~ Day 5

Today is our last day enjoying the Rockies and the Estes Park area - we decided to take a short hike in the morning, so we could enjoy the shops in the afternoon. 

Our hike was a short one - just a 3 1/2 miler to/around/back from Bierstadt Lake. It was much colder this morning - when we started it was 50-degrees and overcast.....brrrr!! The hike was interesting if only because we were hiking on the "other" side of the park from Day 1, and so we saw different views. 

 The lake was nice -

 

The wildflowers were starting to open as we were hiking out.......
 

On the drive back to town, as saw this guy......

Today's elevation was a bit higher than yesterday's hotel room elevation, but much lower than our previous hikes in the Rocky Mountains.

We walked around town for a couple hours after our hike - enjoyed some ice cream and the shops.  Overall this was a great five days - even the rainy one!

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado ~ Day 4

This day is definitely called Rainy Day!  😮

Today had a 90% chance of rain and thunderstorms, so we planned to not hike today, which was a good thing because it started raining around 11am and did not let up. We took a short walk to/around Lake Estes, had breakfast in town, and before we could meander town some more and enjoy the shops, the rain came and it poured. All. Day. Long. 

Today's highest elevation - taken in the hotel room! 😆

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado ~ Day 3

Let's call this Rock Day - rocks under feet and a long vertical rock scramble at the end. 

Today we hiked to Chasm Lake - with a goal of being done, or at least being below treeline, by the time the thunderstorms started, predicted to begin around noon. But first, we had to let some elk by as we drove to the trailhead:

We started about 7:15am for this 8.6 RT, 2,456 elevation change hike though both sub-alpine forest and alpine tundra. Photos along the way....... 

This was the rock scramble at the end....

And then we were at Chasm Lake with Long Peak in the background - Long Peak is the highest point in Rocky Mountain National Park at 14,259-feet.

 Yup - another selfie. 

We hung out for a bit having a snack, then started hiking out. We did get rained-on as we hiked out, but no thunderstorms. At least now we could justify carrying rain jackets everywhere we've been hiking! 😆

Oh, and there were privies along the route that were super cool (for a privy) - they were made of rock and had no ceiling....

 

Our highest elevation of today....

So yet another great day in Rocky Mountain National Park!